But after the first birthday, experts start to disagree. Child psychiatrist Dr. Michael Brody, who chairs the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s television and media committee, is highly skeptical about exposing 3- and 4-year-olds to computers. “Parents discovered early on that TV can be used as a form of social control, as a babysitter–now they’ve discovered the same about computers,” he says, advocating that parents focus on stimulating their children the traditional ways, through reading, sports and play. Not surprisingly, Leslie House, VP of R&D at the educational software company Knowledge Adventure, argues that early exposure to computers is vital in our digital world. “I look at this as preliteracy for computers,” she says (her products start at age 3). Is there anything these two camps can agree on? Just this. Whenever your child starts to point and click, make sure you’re sitting right there. “We call it shoulder-to-shoulder computing,” says Intel consumer-education manager Ralph Bond. We call it good parenting.
